Finding joy during a strange time

Yesterday was our granddaughter Julia’s 6^th birthday. Both sets of her grandparents, her siblings, and her aunts, uncles and cousins (14 of us in all) gathered for a “virtual” birthday party. We sang “Happy Birthday” and watched her eat the lovely pink cake she and her mother had prepared for the occasion. Last week, when she was supposed to have had a real birthday party, the mothers of a bunch of her friends brought their children to her house where they dropped off presents and stood at respectable distances from each other and serenaded her. Her dad did manage to take a brief video of this, which I am attaching here. I am not 100% certain this will work, but I figured it was worth a try.

Here is the link:

https://photos.app.goo.gl/Eo5BY2ixFf9h5xLd6

It will surely be a key memory of her childhood.

Meanwhile, we continue to have our daily reading time with the two little ones, and are doing our best to keep our spirits up. We’ve thought quite a bit about how fortunate we are that we enjoy being together. I cannot imagine how much more difficult this must be for people who are alone or in troubled relationships. And it looks like we will be at this for quite some time.

On Wednesday evening, singer-songwriter David Roth gave an on-line concert from his home on Cape Cod, which we thoroughly enjoyed. Over 500 people tuned in (many presumably with more than one person listening), and he sang one song from each of his dozen or so albums. It was really terrific and we’re all hoping he will do it again soon.

Have a wonderful weekend, and stay healthy!

Love,

Rebecca

Desperate times call for desperate measures

These times call for all of us to assess our priorities. We are doing all we can to stay in touch with our grandchildren, and have even started a daily story-time, reading the two youngest books that we share on our Kindles, and chatting and texting with the older ones. But something we really miss is pizza.

So, we decided to try this ourselves. It has been many years since I worked with yeast dough, but I guess it is a bit like riding a bicycle, you never really forget how. We may have left it in the oven a tad too long, but I have to say it really did come out quite well, particularly since we no longer have access to the “professionals” with their equipment and secret formulas.

Being uncertain how it would work out, we did not buy a lot of yeast, and now all the on-line sources seem to be cleaned out. So, after Passover we will need to start the search if we want to keep doing this! I want to hope that life will return to something closer to normal before we use up the yeast.

Meanwhile, as a break from the constant news on COVID-19, we watched a few movies from the 1980s and 90s. I am sure you have all seen these, but they really are enjoyable enough to watch again.

And the one show that thankfully seems to continue to be aired every day is Jeopardy!

Lastly, an uplifting message from Rabbi Avi Weiss.

Just do everything you can to keep you and your family healthy!

Love,

Rebecca

Hard choices

This is not about Hillary Rodham Clinton’s book published in 2014. I suppose it is about a much more mundane matter, but one with which I am sure many people are struggling in these challenging times.

I was scheduled to go to MSKCC for another pembrolizumab treatment on March 25^th. The original trials of pembro in bladder cancer were two years, and there has not been any published data on longer-term therapy. Since I had a very rapid response to the drug two years ago, and have had no signs of return of the cancer, Dr. Iyer felt it was time to stop the therapy.  I wrote about this back in mid-January. At the time, Barry consulted with a number of colleagues who suggested a sort of compromise, to go to six weeks cycles and “ease off” the treatment. March 25^th would have been six weeks from my last treatment (#33) on February 12^th.

But now the equation has changed. Does the potential benefit of continuing treatment at this time outweigh the risk of my spending the better part of a day at MSKCC in close proximity to individuals who may be infected with COVID-19? Barry helped me to compose an e-mail to Dr. Iyer with precisely this question, and he responded at lightning speed, writing

I was actually just about to e-mail the both of you regarding the below. As you have very nicely described, the risk of coming in for treatment and potentially being exposed to COVID-19 outweighs the risk for a recurrence of the cancer, especially as we are at a point where the treatments are being spaced out. Given the DIPNECH*, there is a higher risk for significant complications if you do contract the virus, so my recommendation at this time would be to cancel the March treatment and plan to treat again in May when, hopefully, this situation is under better control.

We are currently calling all of our patients who could have their treatment delayed to advise them as above.

I would also advise that both of you follow the CDC guidelines on frequent hand washing and social distancing for the immediate future.

*DIPNECH stands for Diffuse Idiopathic Pulmonary Neuroendocrine Cell Hyperplasia

So, the decision is made. Odd as this may sound, I in fact feel quite fortunate that this has happened after I completed the two years of therapy. It would have been a much more difficult decision had we been confronted with it a year ago.

Having said that, it is quite incredible how many people have remained in denial, and the crowds at Disney World and on the Florida beaches this weekend, on the eve of plans to close these areas, prove that.

So, I really am hunkered down here for a while. As Passover is quickly approaching, thanks to all of our friends who have offered to shop for us, with a special shout-out to our friend Lanny who picked up a few items for us in Monsey today that have not yet appeared at the local grocery store.

Our grandchildren are all out of school now through Passover. Difficult as this is, I believe that the correct decisions have been made all around.

We are hunkering down and watching some old movies. We watched the 2009 film “Julie and Julia,” based on the true story of a young woman who cooked and blogged her way through the entire 524 recipes in Julia Child’s cookbook, “Mastering the Art of French Cooking.” Amy Adams plays Julie with Meryl Streep as Julia child. We had seen this when it first came out but it is really a charming film and worth watching again as a great relief to the distressing news.

Meanwhile, stay safe and well!

Love,

Rebecca

Shattered Glass

We’ve hunkered down for the time being, and with the news being so grim and frightening, we got to thinking about distractions. What better distraction is there than watching movies?

Earlier this week, the actor Peter Sarsgaard was a guest on The Late Show. We have not been keeping up with his work in recent years, and at 49 years old he was barely recognizable, with his thinner face and bald head. But the voice was familiar from the 2003 film, Shattered Glass. We really remember enjoying this movie 17 years ago, so we decided to watch it. The following is excerpted from Wikipedia, where I learned that Peter Sarsgaard and I share a birthday (19 years apart):

2003 marked a significant turning point in Sarsgaard's career, when he starred in the feature film Shattered Glass. He depicted journalist Charles Lane, the lead editor of The New Republic. Shattered Glass is based on the real events of journalist Stephen Glass' career at The New Republic during the mid-1990s and his fall when his widespread journalistic fraud is exposed… According to the San Diego Union-Tribune, "Peter Sarsgaard is appealingly level, a stolid straight-shooter as Lane".[34] A reviewer from the Chicago Tribune noted that Sarsgaard plays Lane with "great subtlety and grace".[35] The newspaper concluded with, "The character doesn't seethe with personal resentment; when he does a slow burn, he conveys a much deeper sense of a man's value system being violated past the breaking point."[35] Sarsgaard's performance in the film earned him his first Golden Globe Award nomination and an Independent Spirit Award nomination.[36]

34.   Elliot, David (November 13, 2003). "Credibility Gap 'Shattered Glass' chronicles a media fraud who shattered all around him". The San Diego Union-Tribune.

35.   Caro, Mark (November 6, 2003). "Movie review: 'Shattered Glass'". Chicago Tribune.

36.   "HFPA — Awards Search". Golden Globes Official Website.

Rotten Tomatoes had given the film a 91%. It was every bit as enjoyable now as it was all those years ago, and I highly recommend it as a great distraction in these trying times.

We were supposed to have gone to a taping of The Late Show last evening. Those tickets are not easy to come by, and we were thrilled a couple of weeks ago to discover that we had in fact landed two of them. But, needless to say, a few days ago we decided not to go and sent a cancellation. From past experience, we know that they have a substantial “wait list,” because we have been on that list many times. We watched last night’s show early this morning, and, in one of those small world stories, the main guest was Hank Azaria, who played Michael Kelly, The New Republic editor, in the movie Shattered Glass. This was just a coincidence, I suppose, but still an amusing side note.

Stay well!

Love,

Rebecca

p.s. They announced on The Late Show that this Friday will be their last performance in front of a live audience for the undetermined future. So, I suspect when things get better, it will take another few years for us to land those tickets!

Purim Fun

Today is the Jewish holiday of Purim. It would have been nice to spend it with our children and grandchildren but we had not planned on it because of Barry’s weekly class early tomorrow morning. Even if we had planned to go, we would have been forced to cancel because, having consulted with my pulmonologist, we are essentially self-quarantined at this point. With orders to quarantine announced today for a two-mile radius in New Rochelle, not far from here, we fully expect a widespread lockdown to come soon.

To say I am frightened would be a gross understatement. So, it was tremendously uplifting to see these fantastic pictures of our grandchildren in their Purim costumes, and to receive the lovely tulips they had delivered to us to brighten our day.

This song is to the tune of

“Take Me Out to the Ball Game”,

even though Eliana’s in a football shirt. 

Simmie says it works because,

“Football’s still a type of ball game, right??”

Many thanks to Rebecca Rosenstein (Nana)

for her assistance with the lyrics to this parody.

All baked goods are dairy.  Hot dogs are better that way!

Take me to hear the Megillah,

Take me to hear Groggers roar.

Bring me some pretzels and mustard, please

You can even eat that dairy “hot dog” with cheese!

For there are so many delicious treats to be had

Including a hamantash or two.

We get fifty-four chances to strike out Haman,

On Purim it's great to be a Jew!

Stay safe and well.

Love,

Rebecca

Recognizing this day

On the Jewish calendar, today is the 10^th anniversary of my father’s עליו השלום (may he rest in peace) passing. Ordinarily, I would have gone to synagogue last evening and this morning to recite kaddish, the traditional Jewish prayer said by mourners, but under the current circumstances I am pretty much confined to quarters, so I thought I would write about him instead.

My parents were both born in St. Louis in the 1920s, and spent their first 40 years there before relocating for employment to West Hartford, Connecticut, to Huntington, Long Island, and eventually to Clearwater, Florida. He retired in 1991 following a 40-year career in textiles used in healthcare and industrial applications, publishing over 100 articles in clinical and trade journals. He received a purple heart and bronze star for service in Okinawa during World War II.

I was able to find a few examples of his work on line:

Home laundering of soiled surgical scrubs: Surgical site infections and the home environment

An increasing number of hospitals have implemented programs that permit their operating room (OR) personnel to launder their soiled "scrubs" at home. Not only have they not experienced an increase in the incidence of surgical site infections (SSIs), but they have also found the policy to be financially rewarding. Whereas the Association of periOper...

Aseptics and aesthetics of chlorine bleach: Can its use in laundering be safely abandoned?

The disinfecting and cleansing properties of chlorine bleach in high-temperature laundering formulations first was demonstrated in 1938, and subsequently was found to be equally effective in lower-temperature formulations that included modifications in the laundering cycle. Until another well-documented bleaching additive becomes commercially avail...

I recall speaking at his funeral but I was not able to find the text of that speech. What I did find, though, was a song I wrote for my parents’ 50^th wedding anniversary in 1999. My mother עליה השלום was a huge baseball fan, so I penned a song to “Take Me Out to the Ball Game”:

The year was 1948

The weekend of Labor Day.

Elaine had met a young man named Nate

He called her up and he asked for a date.

Her mom said “Go, you never know

Who else you’ll happen to see.”

Though it wasn’t quite a love at first site

The next year they wed happily.

Before too long the children came,

Each was given a biblical name.

Joseph, Rebecca, Deborah, and Ruth –

After those four they thought they were through.

But a fateful trip in ’64

To a place called Lazy Lee’s.

The following spring, Wendy was born

That made seven the family.

Everclean was the place Nate began

To provide for his family.

But rather than purses, his destiny

Was the hospital uniform industry.

Sterilization and surgical gowns

Helped him earn his Ph.D.

But when it came to the family’s clothes,

Elaine tended to all the laundry!

Living in the Belkin home

Had its ups and its downs.

But every year we would dread the day

When those “boys of summer” began to play.

Elaine was quite a loyal fan,

She cheered for them year after year.

But if the Cardinals were losing a game

It was better if we didn’t hear!

All their lives in St. Louis they’d lived,

In ’69 they had to move on.

West Hartford, Connecticut was their new home

But it wasn’t the last that the Belkins would roam.

Four years later another move,

To New York, but in ‘79

The final move of Nate’s career

Brought them down to this state of sunshine.

Along the way three grandchildren came

Simmie and Dina and Ben.

Two now in college and one junior high,

My, how quickly the time does fly.

We hope you have enjoyed our song

Of the Belkin family.

We’re sure you’ll join us in wishing them

Happy 50^th Anniversary!

Speaking of sports, we learned yesterday that the annual Sarachek Basketball Tournament, in which Joshua’s team, the Maimonides M-Cats, participated last year (see my post of 18 March 2019) and had been invited to come again, has now been cancelled. To be honest, it was something of a relief because the tournament takes place at Yeshiva University here in New York, and we were concerned about having the family staying here at this point. But that relief pales next to the disappointment of all those enthusiastic hoopsters and their families.

I spent some time this morning trying to figure out the logistics of two medical appointments I have next week, even going so far as to give the office for the one that has an out-of-pocket charge my credit card information so that I do not have to spend any more time in that small Manhattan office than necessary. Everything I thought I had figured out how to handle now seems to involve new challenges.

Meanwhile, continue to take care of yourselves and stay well!

Love,

Rebecca

Correction

p.s. I goofed: it was Stephen Stills, not David Crosby, who said “This is the second time we've ever played in front of people, man, we're scared s-less.” https://www.quotes.net/mquote/105667

A new challenge

As most of you know, I have faced significant challenges over the past eight years during which I have been posting on this blog: a rare pulmonary disease requiring the full-time use of supplemental oxygen, and two separate and unrelated cancers (Primary Central Nervous System Lymphoma and Bladder Cancer). With the love and support of my husband and daughters and their families I have weathered these storms. Oddly, perhaps, I never felt particularly afraid. Each time I simply assumed I would get through whatever challenge awaited.

But the emergence and spread of the coronavirus, Covid-19, has me quite rattled. Mount Sinai Hospital, where Barry is on the faculty, has now seen a confirmed case, so it is no longer just something “out there,” it is here. In fact, just moments ago our synagogue, Hebrew Institute of Riverdale, sent out a message which begins:

As you may have heard, SAR Academy and High School along with Westchester Torah Academy and Westchester Day School are closed today. This is a precautionary measure in response to a confirmed Coronavirus case in the schools' community. 

The message goes on to remind us of all the standard precautions we need to take, namely

• Cover your cough or sneeze with a tissue or sleeve, not your hands

• Wash your hands regularly with soap and water for at least 20 seconds

• Avoid touching your face

• Avoid close contact with people who are sick

• Get your flu shot – it’s never too late

• Stay home if you’re feeling sick. Call your doctor and let them know your symptoms and travel history.

SAR Academy is about a mile from where we live.

There may just not be enough hand sanitizer in the world to protect me from this. And while the mortality rate may seem rather low, with estimates of around 2-3%, my age and my underlying pulmonary disease puts me in the highest risk category. To quote David Crosby at Woodstock, but with much less humor, I am scared s-less.

Speaking of hand sanitizer, it is no longer possible to buy it at the local drug stores or on Amazon, but you can still find the ingredients, and here is a recipe for making your own:

Here’s what you need:

·        2/3 cup Isopropyl alcohol 91% (rubbing alcohol)

·        1/3 cup aloe vera gel

·        Essential oil in your choice of fragrance (optional)

·        A small or medium mixing bowl

·        A spoon

·        An empty container, such as a 3-ounce container from a travel toiletries kit

·        A small piece of masking tape for labeling

Here’s how to make it:

In a mixing bowl, stir Isopropyl alcohol and aloe vera gel together until well blended.

Add 8-10 drops of scented essential oil (optional, but nice!). Stir to incorporate.

Pour the homemade hand sanitizer into an empty container and seal. Write “hand sanitizer” on a piece of masking tape and affix to the bottle.

The CDC recommends using hand sanitizer with at least 60% alcohol content. This recipe makes a sanitizer that slightly exceeds that alcohol content at 60.66%, so follow the proportions exactly. If you want a sanitizer with a higher alcohol percentage, decrease the amount of aloe vera to 1/4 cup.

Of course, hand sanitizer is the second-best way to keep your digits germ-free. The No. 1 way, according to the CDC, is to properly wash your hands.

For the time being, I am largely self-quarantined, with plans to limit outings as much as possible. This may have to go on for a while, we are just not sure.

Please, everyone, take care of yourselves and stay well!

Love,

Rebecca